Womb

The film Womb has an excellent concept. We're in some unspecified future, perhaps present, and a young woman decides to have a clone of her deceased lover grown in her womb. This is a topic that could have sparked a lot because it's moral madness, but unfortunately, very little was extracted from it. (30.06.2017)

Very disconcerted impressions. On the one hand, Benedek Flieghauf's visually robust and meditative style, supported by a beautiful camera and an almost Bergmanian timelessness, but on the other hand the need to construct a hypothetical situation and a kind of "über" Freudian paradox in which the symbolic duplication of mother-mistress becomes a biological reality. There may be a fundamental problem in this hypotheticality - although the director admits a fascination with genetic determinism, the only person who could adequately judge this film is a psychoanalyst. It's simply more symbolic than a "hard-core scientific" portrayal of a fantasy about a mother who is not bound by impenetrable taboos. There are a lot of well-constructed situations in Womb, but on the other hand I see a great tension between Fliegauf's "cold observer" method and the commentator involved. It seemed to me that no one on set (understandably) knew what to make of the characters’ story and relationships - it's so extremely complex and speculative that the whole film nested on a very unstable subsoil of a mix of drama, a romantic film and a fairy tale. As a result, the overwhelming sense of focus I felt watching Dealer faded away when I watched this film, and sometimes the impression of brilliantly filmed sexlessness creeps into it. (10.08.2011)